


The Now

by SynapseSymphony



Category: Mr. Robot (TV)
Genre: Death, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-19
Updated: 2017-07-19
Packaged: 2018-12-04 05:50:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11548806
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SynapseSymphony/pseuds/SynapseSymphony
Summary: He read something a while back that said the people you like make you laugh more.  By that logic, if Elliot ever managed to crack a joke, he might actually pull a muscle.





	The Now

Leon didn’t like killing people. Something about church every Sunday and sermons at his kitchen table every night, disguised as prayers had put him off to it.  

He’d done it though.  A few times.  More than he ever thought he would. The first time was the worst- he throws up in an alley as he’s running away, scared and shaking,  with a knife in his hand covered in someone else’s blood.  It’s the violence that makes him sick- he doesn’t know what he’s done until the next morning, and he realizes he can never go back.  That is the moment that his life splits into the before and the after. 

He doesn’t get sick then, just lays on his bed and lets the change wash over him, because he is in the after now, and he will never be the same. .

It doesn’t get easier, but it gets manageable.  He still shakes.  He still feels sick.  But he doesn’t spend hours clinging to his sheets waiting for the change to come, because it already has.  

Except for when it comes to Elliot- that’s something like divine wrath, he thinks.  As if God themself had filled him with enough rage to save the one person he cared about, that made him feel whole. 

Made him feel like he was in the before again.  Just having someone to talk to, to listen, to help.  It was so human and fulfilling.  Elliot was his friend-in spite of everything else.  You can be friends while all the while withholding secrets, if you’re willing to work at it enough, he decides -if there is something tangible to bring you together.

And when Elliot laughs for the first time, when he doesn’t say anything particularly funny, he realizes it’s there, waiting to be grasped at.

(He read something a while back that said the people you like will make you laugh more.  By that logic if Elliot ever managed to crack a joke, he might actually pull a muscle.)  

It’s kind of cosmic,after that,  really.  It doesn’t seem that way, eating disgusting meals as Leon talks about television and Elliot listens and interjects from time to time.  It is though. Sitting on the edge of basketball courts and not saying much, but only a few inches apart- enough to make Leon nervous and sick, but in a way that made his spine tingle and his heart flutter.  

Just being.  Just trusting, with all of this hanging over their heads, a small comfort in a weary world becoming a large one.  A before and an after- one where he actually liked the after better. 

So when they try to harm him, Leon doesn’t shake and he doesn’t get sick- because this little cosmic moment is over and he must bring about its end in order to do his job, to protect. 

It’s divine.  And it hurts. 

He does what he needs to, as always. When he’s finished, knife in hand, he looks into Elliot’s eyes, and he wish he could say that there was no fear at all, but there is.  

Less though.  Enough to know that the fear isn’t for him, and that he’s ended that horror.   

He wants to hold him, and tell him that everything will be okay.  That the time that they have had is coming to an end, but there will be more time later. 

Maybe it’s the way he’s lived, maybe it’s the way he is able to understand things greater than himself, than Elliot- than what the both of them could be if he just said the right words- but he keeps it to himself, because he’s not sure if Elliot feels the same.  If Elliot _wants_ there to be more time. 

He couldn’t anyway.

So he says the wrong words, and leaves, just like he is supposed to.

He does not realize it until he hears that Elliot has been shot, and that he helped him send him down that path, that he has broken into a before and after.

Before Ellliot.  After Elliot. 

However, as his gut twists and he feels sick, he cannot bring himself to accept that there is an after.  There is a present. 

Elliot.  

Come hell or highwater, he would find a way to live there.  

**Author's Note:**

> Just a Thot I had that spiraled


End file.
